Barack obama is back where he spent the past two years-on the campaign trail. He has been visiting recession-wracked towns, wooing carefully-chosen journalists and drumming up support on the internet. But Mr Obama is also learning that governing is different from campaigning. Selling "hope" and "change" was one thing. Selling a 14.00-page stimulus package that has just emerged from the legislative mill is quite another.rnThe Republicans have spent the past week arguing that Mr Obama's bill has destroyed any claims that he might have had to be a reformer, partly because the $787 billion bill is stuffed full of boondoggles, but also because of the way that it was sledge-hammered through the legislature. During his long campaign Mr Obama repeatedly promised two things: to reach out to Republicans and Democrats rather than pandering to his supporters, and to let in as much light as possible on the people's business.rnBut his bill represented the triumph of business as usual, passed with just three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House, and concocted in secret by the Democratic leadership, a trio of north-eastern Republican senators and a handful of White House aides. Not a single legislator who voted on the mammoth bill can have read it all.
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